Some fifteen years ago, before Mr. Lowe had developed into Viscount Sherbrooke, we were sitting next each other, one afternoon, on the front Opposition Bench. The House was in the possession of an orator of the kind to whom it pays ‘the genuine tribute of undissembled horror’ by reducing itself to a handful of members, but we, for some reason or other, could not escape, and fell accordingly to talking in self-defence. The conversation found its way to Thucydides, and I asked my companion whether it had ever struck him to write an article on the uses of that author to the modern statesman. He said, ‘No,’ but the idea pleased him; he dallied with it for some time, and had even, I believe, some correspondence on the subject with the editor of one of the monthly reviews. Nothing, however, came of his good intentions, and I am not aware that anyone else has done what he did not do. It seems to me, accordingly, that it might not be wholly un-interesting to this Society if I were to try to answer the question whether the study of Thucydides is useful at all to the modern statesman, and, if so, to what extent?

The following paper has for its raison d'être certain letters, three of James VI. of Scotland, and one of Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, which have never before been made public, I believe, and the originals of which I can submit to the inspection of the Society. They are of no great historical importance, but with the circumstances amid which they were written they will help to throw some light upon the state of society in Scotland during the latter part of the sixteenth century, when James VI. was endeavouring to hold his own and support the dignity of the crown among the contending religious and family parties in Scotland, and was so serving an apprenticeship in kingcraft which ill fitted him for his subsequent place at the head of a peaceful, well-ordered kingdom like England. The letters are addressed to members of the family of Betoun, James Betoun of Creich, and his third cousin, Robert Betoun of Balfour.

Brief description of Hungary—General characteristics of Hungary in the Middle Ages—Statistical comparison of the territorial development of Prussia and Hungary—Hungary a ‘national state’—Standpoint wherefrom to appreciate the Magyar County—History of the Magyar County—Comparison of Magyar and English counties—Sovereignty of the Magyar County—Comparison with Slav counties—Salutary effect of the Hungarian County—The privileges of noblemen in the administration of Hungarian counties—Recriminations of the non-Magyar nationalities of Hungary.

Byzantines, Romans, Kelts, Germans, and Sclavs form the five civilising peoples of mediaeval Europe. Three of them inhabited, and still inhabit, the actual body of the Continent, whereas the Byzantines were driven into the extreme southeast, and the Kelts into the extreme north-west, even farther than suited their capacities and pursuits, owing to the continued onward march of the others. It was also unfortunate for the Kelts that they were, so to say, a distinctly unhistorical and unsettled people; that they had no history of any importance; did not keep any record even of such events as occurred around them; and that other communities, distinct from themselves as regards place and speech, took but little notice of them. Hence, of the earlier history of the mediaeval Kelts, and especially of their chief branch, the Irish, we know practically nothing; and this although there is yet extant concerning them a literature which compares favourably in extent with that of any other early people. Imagination and the works of scholars, especially after the tenth century, supplied that which was painfully wanting in actuality.

The short Latin treatise to which I give the above title claims the attention of all who study the mediaeval history of England, in several respects. It is one of the earliest Latin compilations of English law written by a jurist; it serves to explain some Anglo-Saxon ordinances and to reconstruct their text; it contains the only trace, though hidden under a foreign form, of some Anglo-Saxon legal articles; and it sheds some light on the English constitution about A.D. 1100, especially on the remnants and traditions of an earlier policy.

The Laws of the Mercers of Lichfield which have been transcribed by Mr. Russell and will, I trust, find a place in our next volume of Transactions, seem to me to have very special interest. They are typical of the ordinances which were made for industrial regulation in the seventeenth century. Throughout this century there was an extraordinary development of industrial and commercial companies, many of which were formed by statute and others by letters patent. The wisdom of granting such patents for commercial purposes was the subject of long-continued discussion—this centred round the action of the East India Company. But, if we except some special cases in the time of Charles I., there seems to have been comparatively little dispute about the industrial companies, and a great many were formed or were reconstituted during this period. Of these the Cutlers Company of Sheffield is the most celebrated.

In the ‘English Historical Review’ for April (1893) Professor Ashley offers some criticisms upon the ‘Introduction to the Inquisition of 1517,’ contributed by me to the ‘Transactions of the Royal Historical Society’ for 1892. One object of that Introduction, it may be remembered, was to disprove the assertion of Professor Ashley that at the time when the evictions for inclosure began, and until ‘towards the end of the period,’ ‘the mass of copyholders’ had no legal security. In my view, the manorial records, the compilations of laws in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the practice of the courts, even the treatises of the jurists when critically scrutinised, led to the conclusion not merely that copyholders enjoyed protection in legal theory, but that their predecessors in title, the villeins, had done so before them. I drew no distinction in this matter between customary tenants and copyholders, as Professor Ashley appears to suppose, but showed that security extended even to villeins by blood, or ‘nativi,’ on custo-mary lands. Professor Ashley's proposition that ‘customary tenants’ and ‘copyholders’ were equivalent terms was never doubted by me, and is irrelevant to my argument. Indeed, it is assumed by me on the very pages to which he refers. ‘Mr. Leadam,’ he says, ‘draws a sharp distinction between “copyholders” on the one side and “tenants at will” on the other—a distinction which one may doubt whether the men of the sixteenth century would have felt so keenly.’ The distinction, as those who turn to the passage will see, is between ‘copyholders,’ used in Fitzherbert's sense as equivalent to customary tenants, who were ‘tenants at will according to the custom of the manor,’ and ‘tenants at will at Common Law.’

The dearth of serious literature, which has been the chief feature of the English book-market in the publishing season of 1892–3, has visited with especial vigour the domain of History. Some who are well qualified to discuss the causes of the above phenomenon have attributed the falling-off to the vast increase in the production of serial literature. In the last volume of ‘Transactions’ attention was called to this state of affairs, with the remark that ‘it would seem as though the progress of research in this country must, for some time to come at least, be traced in the pages of periodical and serial publications.’ This somewhat bold prediction is apparently in a fair way to be verified, and it may be worth while to examine more closely the nature of the crisis with which we are confronted.